


No One's Redemption Story

by SycoraxSebastian



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, HP: EWE, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 17:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4271031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SycoraxSebastian/pseuds/SycoraxSebastian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginny never needed to be saved by Harry Potter. In fact, she saved herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No One's Redemption Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silver_fish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_fish/gifts).



No matter how many times other people tried to tell her so, Harry had never been Ginny's salvation. Maybe he had pulled her alive from the Chamber of Secrets, but the saving had happened afterwards, and it had been all her. She refused to be his shadow, her brothers' shadow or her mother's golden seventh girl. She had every reason to sink into herself after having lost so much of her soul to feed the growth of another's, but the soul she had left was so strong that it didn't matter that Riddle had been eating away at her for the better part of a year. She built herself up from the smoking wreck Tom Riddle had left her with and emerged better than she ever could have been before. This was not Harry Potter's work, nor was it Tom Riddle's. It was all Ginny’s and she was sharper, brighter and more powerful than those dark haired orphan boys with the tongues of snakes. 

They just never thought to look her way, she was pretty, but she hadn't been chosen the way Harry, Ron and Hermione had been. She wasn't destined for greatness like Neville nor was she funny like Fred and George. She was fierce and feisty and shiny and beautiful and all those adjectives girls are given when they are too much to pin down but you still want to fit them in a box and make them likeable. If people told the truth when they described Ginny, they would have talked about how her mouth was twisted more often into a determined frown than it was in a smile (her smiles were never carefree), how she would snap first and ask questions later and usually only after she had thrown a hex or two. No one ever talked about how easily she got into violent fist fights, how she emerged panting and victorious from these fights, looking more alive then than she ever had before. There was something brilliant about the tangible connection of her fist against someone else’s face, something that helped to remind her that yes, she was still breathing, yes, there was still blood pumping through her veins. Sometimes she forgot, when she was alone, that she hadn’t died in the Chamber. She didn’t like to be alone much, after her first year. But she had never been able to be alone that year, so she learned to relish the silences, even if she had to remind herself to breathe. She didn’t like being alone as much as she liked knowing she could be alone, if she wanted to.

All these reasons and more are why Ginny tried to forget about her childish infatuation with Harry Potter. She no longer wants to belong to him, to be claimed as “Harry Potter’s Girl”. She has learned exactly how dangerous it is to give yourself up to someone, and no matter how sweet Harry’s smile is, no matter how green his eyes are and no matter how much she wants to be loved by him, she can’t let herself fall for him. That would weaken her and weakness is the last thing Ginny wants to show. Instead she builds up her walls and lines boy after boy up between her and Harry. She cares for them, in her own way, but they only serve the purpose of toughening her heart for Harry. She may have stitched her broken pieces together after Tom Riddle siphoned her soul out, but that doesn’t mean she has no cracks. She did have fissures in her foundation, but she has long since filled the holes with titanium, with unforgiving diamond, because she is now harder and sharper than flesh and that means no one can cut her down.

Gradually, Ginny lets people get under her skin, and her smiles become less brittle as she no longer has to fight to stay awake in her own mind. Once again, though, it is not Harry Potter who is her savior. Oh, no, no boy will ever crack her open like that again. It is Luna Lovegood, with her firm belief in the things no one else can see, her gentle insistence that lost things never truly stay lost, who brings Ginny back to herself. She slowly and surely brings Ginny’s guard down until she can truly trust someone other than herself again. Because, now that she thinks about it, Luna is her first real friend. She's friendly with Neville, Hermione will always talk to her, and she could say that she's friends with the boys she's been dating, but that would not be so true- none of those people were her friends for her. Luna looked at her and saw a person, not a victim, not someone's little sister, not the girl who liked Harry Potter, but Ginny Weasley, a broken and pieced back together witch with a tight smile and a wicked right hook.

Only after Luna has befriended Ginny does Ginny allow herself to even dream about Harry. Sometimes in her dreams, though, Harry’s hair would grow to be waist length and dirty blond and his bright green eyes would coalesce into pale silver, and Luna would hold her close and protect her in her own strange way. She resolved to never tell anyone of these dreams, feeling bewildered by this turn of events in her feelings towards her best friend. It would be lying to say that she didn’t feel a little more joyful and little safer when she was with Luna. She saved her brightest smiles for her friend, the dreamy yet piercing girl who was surprised to even have friends, and she was terrified of breaking the warm friendship she shared with Luna to even hint at anything more.

It was in her fifth year that she began to notice Harry’s glances becoming heated with something more than just a shared joke. She smiled to herself, because now, this boy she dreamed about for years as a little girl, the boy she was slowing getting to know and she was this close to convincing herself she was almost in love with him, this boy was beginning to fall in an infatuation her and she was quickly falling deeper in love with Luna Lovegood. And one day, after a particularly brilliant game of Quidditch, Harry swept her up into his arms and his heart and she shoved aside any thoughts of Luna that were not purely platonic. This, with Harry, this was now, this was the fulfillment of all her childish dreams. But if this was a wish come true, why did she feel like she was betraying someone? 

After Dumbledore dies, in a haze of grief and the realization that the approaching storm had hit, Ginny barely registers that Harry has broken up with her. Things between them are strange, stilted, but when haven’t they been? They were happiest together when they were only friends. When Ginny sees Harry again preceding Bill and Fleur’s wedding, she can sense the regret and want that crackles along him every time he looks her way, and she is surprised to note that she no longer wants to be with him like that. She misses her friend Harry, she misses the jokes and the shy smiles that used to light him up. When she looks at him, all she can think of is that horrible first year of school, she can see the darkness and hate of Voldemort creeping across him and she wishes there was something she could do to bring him back. But at this point, she wants nothing to do with saving Harry. That’s his job. She, of all people, knows the only way to get away from Voldemort is to save yourself.

When she gets back to school, a place with no Harry, no Hermione, no Ron, no Dumbledore, a place defeated and darkened by the leadership of Severus Snape and the wrath of the Carrows, she seeks refuge in her friendship with Luna. There is something both grounding and freeing about Luna’s particular brand of lunacy (although Ginny doubts that Luna is actually crazy, she’s as sane as anyone else. The difference lies in the fact that she has no filter), and Ginny finds herself falling deeper, harder than ever before, in love with Luna. This is a different love from the fuzzy awakenings of a teenage girl who has little to lose (because she already thought she lost everything), this is the strong, steady love that reaches out and holds you firmly, tightly, keeps you safe in your itching skin, and Ginny is grateful for it. She never talks to Luna about it, but she’s always there with open arms and surprisingly gentle healing spells after the Ginny has to visit the Carrows’ office. Luna knows how Ginny feels, Ginny is sure of it, but she waits patiently and caringly, hinting at things with her roundabout, twisting statements, and for once, Ginny is alright with leaving things where they are.

After Luna disappears, Ginny begins to forget things. The year passes by in a blur of pain and worry and forgetting. When asked later, about the events of her sixth year, Ginny replies truthfully with “I don’t know”. She fights, but she fights mindlessly. She knows that she disappears to a place she found in her first year, when things were going dark round the edges and she could hear the hissing of snakes in her ears even when she wasn’t asleep.

The day that Voldemort is killed is the day Ginny wakes up. Harry runs to her arms and she allows herself to become an escape for him, she can see the future in his tired eyes. Luna has gone to help her father rebuild their house, the minute after the war ended and Ginny is too caught up in her newly returned Harry to remember the love for Luna that she forgot.

Of course, that’s all too good to last. 

Ginny watches Harry fade away after the war. It hurts, but each time she tries to reach out to him, he shrinks away and there's really not much she can do about it. There's not much she wants to do about it, honestly. Something inside him broke, or at least changed when he came back from the Forbidden Forest. That widened the already growing chasm between them and Ginny is no longer sure she minds. It would take too much effort to try to bridge the gap and Ginny has other things to worry about. After all, Harry is not the only one who lost something in the Battle.

Each day Ginny feels the gaping loss of Fred a bit more keenly. Normally, she's not one to wallow in her sadness, it's not really how she operates, but when George just wanders around the Burrow, looking like he's lost a limb, hope seems far away. And too be fair, George is missing far more than just his ear. 

The stagnant air of mourning that pervades the usually bustling Burrow is stifling to Ginny. She needs to get out, to fly away. She begins to take to the skies each morning, right after she wakes up, stopping only for a quick lunch and then the somber dinner she shares with her family. It's painful to watch her father and Ron try to cover the empty seat that belonged to Fred with pointless chatter, but the other option of silence is deafening and terrifying. Ginny wishes she could skip these dinners, but her mother is already too upset to deal with her absence, too.

Another time, and she would have sought solace in Harry, but the few times she's seen him since the Battle, he's either run straight to Ron or sat silently with her, answering her encouraging questions with monosyllabic responses. This is not the boy she nursed a crush on for years, not the boy she fell in love with at age 15, not the man she imagined spending the rest of her life with. His withdrawal from her makes it that much easier for her to break it off with him. The next time he's at the Burrow, she draws him aside.

"Harry, look at me," she says, trying to make eye contact with him. He doesn’t look at her, but she can see that his eyes are dull and there are deep shadows smudged underneath them.

"Don't, Gin," he tries to turn away from her, but she stops him with a hand to his shoulder.

"No. Listen to me. I love you, Harry. But I love you, not this broken shell you've become. I understand that you're hurt. I understand that you've lost people. I've lost people, too! It's not...it's not an excuse to.forget me, though! Wouldn't this be easier if we both had someone to turn to? I’m here for you, but I need you to be here for me, too,” Ginny looks him in the eyes for the first time in a long time and sees the truth even as he says what they were both thinking.

“I... I can’t. I’m so sorry,” He shrugs away from her hand and walks away without looking back.

“I know. Thank you!” she calls after him, feeling freer than she has in a long time.

The year after the war is a year of change. For everyone. Ginny watches with bemused wonder as Harry reconnects with a remorseful Draco Malfoy, finding solace in the man he pulled from the fire, a man who was burned clean and new. Ginny makes the mistake of thinking that because Draco is regretful of his Death Eater days, he is a newer, nicer person. Just because he is no longer actively evil, it doesn’t mean his wit is any less biting. There is just a bigger smile behind his insults. The way he looks at Harry is something to see, although they both insist they are merely friends. Ginny knows, she knows the way he acts around the people he likes like that, and she is the first to grin and say “I called it!” when they tell her they are together.

She’s more surprised when Draco pulls her aside, later that day, to ask her if it was alright he was with Harry.

“Alright? Of course it’s alright, you prat!” Ginny smiles, shoving in a way only that only Weasleys can.

His lips quirk in a small smile, and he shrugs off the vigorous shove.  
“It’s just, I don’t want to take him away from you…” Draco’s usually sarcastic voice sounds strange in this rare moment of honesty and vulnerability, and she wants to hug him and tell him not to worry- she’s grown to care for the ex-Slytherin and his snarky love of Harry. He doesn’t care that Harry is the “Savior of the Wizarding World”, and that, she knows, is good for both of them.

“Oh, Draco, he hasn’t been mine for a long time, and that’s honestly better for both of us,” Ginny laughs.

Draco smiles wider. That’s when she hugs him.

Ginny is more surprised when Ron and Hermione break up. It isn’t an amicable split, angry words are thrown and hexes are cast and it takes a long time for them to regain any semblance of a former friendship, but they do, and although it’s rocky, everyone heaves a sigh of relief. Of course, they are friends, but they have both vehemently insisted that they are never dating each other again. Ginny is even more surprised when the mystery dates they both bring to Harry and Draco’s Halloween party turn out to both be ex-Slytherins. It’s most likely due to Harry and Draco’s friend groups having to spend far more time together once the two of them began dating. Ron seems a bit bewildered and slightly frightened by Daphne Greengrass, a pretty blonde ex-Slytherin with enough steel in her eyes to match Ron’s clumsy fire. It isn’t until she sees Hermione, laughing, wrapped up in Pansy Parkinson’s arms, that she remembers Luna.

Luna disappeared after the war, rebuilding her father’s house and herself, recovering from spending far too long in the Malfoy Manor dungeon, but she appears on the doorstep of the much happier Burrow less than an hour after Ginny sends her an owl.

“You came!” Ginny shouts, truly, truly surprised.

“Oh, Ginny, I’ve always been here for you. I was just waiting for you to realize it yourself. You needed to get rid of the Nargles before you could see, though.” Luna’s voice is kind and soft and sharp and alive and everything that Ginny has ever loved about her. 

Ginny doesn’t quite register that she is crying, because she’s too busy smiling wider than she has in a long time.

When Luna opens her arms and Ginny leaps into them, she feels like she’s returning home. When they kiss, she realizes she never left. She resolves to never leave, ever, and she can tell from the way Luna’s mouth feels on hers that Luna is resolving the same thing.


End file.
